May 2006

I started writing this a week ago, so some of it may well be old news:

Cat and Girl: He’s managed to take something quite surreal and turn it into something really sweet and cute, the facial expression of the bike-receiving-fish (yeah, now you’re gonna click that link!) is simply perfection.

Divine Clothing: Bill has done his final printing of the second season of shirts, so this is your last chance to pick up one up, I particularly like “those who live are those who love“, all tees $16.
Crowded Teeth: The sale started last week, but it deserves a mention because I’m sure you don’t spend all day looking at tee blogs, Michelle’s tee are down to $15 from $24, and the hoodies (including the one I recommended a while back) are down to $25 from $40.

No Star Clothing: Their new site is up, it’s just as clean and smooth as it used to be, and there’s a few cool new additions to the line up, expect me to be recommending thishoodie soon, and making tenuous claims that the birds are ‘blue tits’ just so I can make some weak jokes.

After the longest amount of downtime (5ish days) I’ve experienced since I started blogging back in 2003 on Blogger, my host has moved me to a new server. I’d like to make it clear I’m not annoyed at my host, he’s a good guy and something went wrong during an upgrade of server software. It happens. The ads don’t seem to have transferred during the server move, I’m sure you’re all crying for me over that one (ewww emoticons).

I’m sure that I’ve lost a few readers, and with fair justification, I’d probably forget about a website if it was offline for a week, so hopefully they’ll come back, but thanks to those of you who have messaged me to ask whats up, and thanks to TEEES for getting the message out that I hadn’t abandoned hoodies (even though it is summer).

There’s some cool stuff coming up, like a hands on review of Oddica (check out some pics on my Flickr), and what will now be a bit of an outdated Cotton Filter.

*UPDATE* I should have added that on Saturday and Monday I have my final university exams, so obviously they are going to be taking precedence over my blogging duties, but everything should be back to normal by Tuesday, I apologise for the future inconvenience, but I’m sure you all know the stress of exams.

Time for some one-off innovation from the community at Etsy. I quite like Etsy, it seems like a good way for independent designers to get their work to a larger audience without having to learn how to design a website or pay someone to do it for them.

The image is just the hood of the hoodie, I like the exaggerated (though one would presume, non-structurally integral) stitching on the hood-join, and the two blue blocks around the Dreams of Flight tag give a subtle dash of colour.

There are some other details too, like concentric circles that are the same colour as Britain’s RAF. There’s also an applique of a bird in flight around there somewhere.

For someone that finds themselves pretty net literate I’ve made a bit of a howler…

I just activated the Akismet anti-spam software for this blog after testing it out on another blog of mine, and it said I had a load of spam comments to filter. Which I thought was odd, because this blog hadn’t got a single comment for a couple of months (I just thought you guys were real quiet). Upon looking at the list of spam it was pretty much 50/50 real comments vs. spam comments. So I must apologise for not replying to all the comments that people have left, but I simply didn’t know that they existed. One guy even put a link to the elusive Aiko hoodie! And Teees has been giving fairly regular comment upon my choices too.

The Cotton Filter is a new feature to HYA. My brother said to me a while back that I was starting to lose focus on the sleeves, and he makes a fair point, so I’m going to put out the Cotton Filter to keep you updated on cool new shops, Hide Your Arms news (little tweaks that don’t warrant an admin bulletin), re-stocks, regurgitated MySpace bulletins from the clothes labels on my friends list, sales and coupon codes. And before you say it (and probably a bit after you’ve thought it) this does seem remarkably similar to Hang Tags, doesn’t it?

Ok, I posted this and now I’ve noticed how long it is, so it’s gonna have to sit behind a jump[click to continue…]

I must be entirely honest and admit that I didn’t actually recognise this quote, but something clicked in my brain that said “Andy, that is totally from a movie. Google it, then get a pitta bread.” About 10 seconds later I found out that the quote is from legendary 80s Van Damme kickbox-a-thon “Bloodsport“, though curiously it has not been deemed a memorable quote by the powers-that-be at IMDB. I then ate a pitta bread.

It’s a pretty simple track jacket, words and a stock kickboxer silhouette, but its pretty effective, and the off-vertical text gives it a bit of a DIY feel (or has the little ninjutsu man kicked the letters so hard they’ve moved?)

I often feel then when I’m writing this blog I just say whats great about a product, and that’s usually because I like things because they’re just generally awesome, and whilst I do like today’s choice, I do have a couple of gripes with it.

1. I like the design, but it just feels a bit poorly executed, the squaring off of the print in the top corner just feels as if this was printed in the mid-90s (did I just make a ‘that is so last year’-esque comment, wow, I really am a fashion writer!). If you’re going to have lines that go out like clouds, finish off the design like a cloud, it adds so much value to a design when we see the whole thing rather than a framed off portion.

2. The zip. I’m sure I could say this about a lot of zip-up hoodies, but the colour of the zip is important, in this case it splits the design far too much, if it was a subtle black then the continuation of the print would be much more effective.

Still, I do like it, and I like how Soul Life have given a back story about the artist, it makes me feel more indie.

Today’s recommendation is a bit special, but I must admit I don’t know how much it costs.

Akomplice seem to have gone down the classy route with this jacket, and what makes clothing classy? Stitching!

The front of the jacket (not pictured) has Akomplice embroidered onto it on the left breast, but that’s not where the needle-work ends, oh no my friends. On the back (pictured, otherwise there would be no picture) there’s a load of tanks, lined up, ready for battle perhaps. But instead of firing deadly shells, they’re firing roses, and those roses are also embroidered, honestly, how sweet must this jacket look in reality rather than photoshop theory.

Akomplice clothing can be purchased from many locations online and at a store in most American states (as well as a few select stores globally). See the full list here.

A quick roundup of a few clothes related links I’ve picked up through the weekend.

Oddica: Everyone is talkingabout Oddica, the tee store that gives 41% of every sale to the artist. It seems like a great deal for designers, and the tees look great too. (and I am not bitter that they didn’t send me a freebie…)

KiserNY: Pointed out by Addicteed recently, there’s some great designs here, like animals made of flower print.

Oh, Lordi: A video of the winners of last nights Eurovision song contest, with their song “Hard Rock, Hallelujah”. I don’t know how clear the lyrics are, but listen out for “the hour of rockoning is upon us” and “its time for the a-rock-alypse“.

I know that when you buy a tee from and independent shop on the net it’s usually a pretty small operation, and your sale will mean something to the artist, because a) you like their designs, and b) you put a couple of dollars in their pocket. But this time it really really will mean something to the artist. Really.

The dude that runs Seibei needs to get to Hawaii for a wedding, and I don’t know how much it costs to fly to Hawaii, but I can almost guarantee that its a lot. He’s also moving house soon aswell, and with all the stress of moving house, is he really going to want to shift boxes and boxes of tees around. Hell no! So he had the great idea of putting almost everything on sale to $12. I say almost everything, because the awesome ‘Intramural Zombie Hunting League‘ tee is $14 as they’re still made to order (incase you want more blood, and who wouldn’t?), which is still a bargain anyways.

So if you were thinking of getting a tee, and couldn’t decide what, pick something up from Seibei, it’ll make you feel warm in the inside, and if you’re warm on the inside, then you don’t need sleeves (until Monday, when I write about something sleeved again, please come back…).

I was taking a look at the ‘web-based platform for publication and publicity’ (ummm, blog?) that is Design Spotters earlier today and loved the tee they were promoting from UK label Dead By Sunday, there was a really ‘rock’ feel to it, which didn’t feel forced or fake, like most high-street Iron Maiden tour ’82 tees, so I thought I’d take a look if they did anything with sleeves. They do!

The hoodie that I’ve picked is certainly rather different in style to their tee offerings (one of which I think may be an homage to Rage/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello), but I still like it, even though I can’t decide if doing a yin/yang themed hoodie is a bit cliche. Whether its cliche or not, they’ve certainly pulled it off with some style, those koi carp (right? I don’t know fish) look fantastic.

Dead By Sunday is still in its infancy (check their about page, they sound like good people), so everything is made to order, but somehow prices are kept pretty low by British standards.

Costiness=Â£40 take a look at the rest of the range here, but I presume to need to order by e-mail (if they do mail order at all).

One of my favourite aspects of writing Hide Your Arms is that I get to interact with a creative community of young designers who are out there doing something different from the norm.

Un-earthing great clothes and showing them to readers is very rewarding (as are the freebies…), but sometimes I like to try something a bit different and get a greater understanding for what inspires the clothing that I promote here on Hide Your Arms.

With that in mind I asked Rafael Vera, from The Handsome Sausage, if he would like to do an interview. My charm and wit clearly won through, as he agreed to and promptly answered my (admittedly uninspiring) questions.

Jungle Life posted a real nice profile of Hide Your Arms, so to any new visitors, thanks for stopping by and take a look at the archives, there’s plenty of goodies in there.

Also, for the newbies, don’t take the next few days as being normal Hide Your Arms behaviour, I’m trying my hand at interviewing (yeah, like a real journalist) and that’s going to be split over the next couple of days.
Check out the profile.

I wasn’t aware that this hoodie had straight-edge written on it when it first caught my eye, and I still don’t know if it has anything to do with the sXe movement but its a nicely designed hoodie if you can get yourself past the cultural connotations.

The design is looks well conceived (though that eagle may be a bit iffy), and I presume that it runs over onto the back, which makes the shoulder-placement all the sweeter, and I guess you can recreate those pirate fantasies by claiming to have a bird on your shoulder…

Oh, and its a good thing those straight-edgers aren’t spending money on booze, because this hoodie don’t come cheap.

Costiness=$130 from Shop Ten Sixteen. For those of you that love 4% discounts, use the code “promo-shipping” (no quotation marks) when you spend $200 dollars to get $8 off shipping.

Just dropping a little note to say that I have now added syndication functionality to Hide Your Arms, I personally only use del.icio.us and enjoy being able to tag things from the Firefox toolbar, but I don’t know much about the other social bookmarking networks, so hopefully this will make it easier for you to remember your favourite Hide Your Arms posts (and digg me into bandwidth oblivion).

I have removed the AdBrite box saying ‘your ad here’, no one was biting, so there’s no point wasting space on the sidebar when it isn’t going to effective use. There is an advertising page now though, in case anyone wants to get their name out there, prices very flexible, if I like your company I might even give you a weeks skyscraper for free.

Thanks to the people I don’t know who added me as their friend on MySpace. I certainly was right about us being an attractive bunch!

The people from Aiko got back in touch with me and I do have a resolution to my search, but I’m afraid it wasn’t quite the answer I was hoping for.

The only way you can buy original Aiko products is from two sources. The store run by the people behind Aiko in Amsterdam, or a store in Milan. Dang.

Well, I’ve always said I’d love to go back to Amsterdam…

*EXCITING UPDATE GOODNESS*
Dave Rambo found a webshop that has Aiko available online and posted the links in the comments section of the previous Aiko post. The cotton-y goodness can be found at Subnormals.com, I wonder if the guys that run Aiko know about it, and if so, why didn’t they tell me?

Much like Jungle Life my favourite from the range is the bike hoodie (zip-up version), the idea of collage hoodies is pretty interesting and the colour layering is very nice, and I can personally recomment their ink, I don’t know what it’s made of, but gosh-darn its soft. There are also 3 squares of fabric stitched on the front (at least I think it is, doesn’t seem like ink on the front).

Costiness=$84.00 from Brooklyn Industries (get a 10% discount with the coupon code “skyline06″ – no quotation marks). And remember, it is one of a kind.

I found myself on the weareaiko blog last wekk, taking in all the colours, thinking “jackpot, hoodies galore”, but then I realised that there were no links to actually buy them. No worries I thought, Google (haha, linking to the Goog) to my rescue. Nope.

I managed to find an interview with Niko Stumpo, the Norwegian-born-Italian who lives in Amsterdam who created the Aiko brand, and whilst it was a good read, it was another dead-end.

More clever googling took me to milksugar.de (possibly owned by Niko), a web-store packed to the brim with super-awesome bags, including Aiko bags, but no tees or hoodies. Dang.

His personal site is little help, though the art is incredible, no wonder he’s worked with Sony, Nike, Heineken (my favourite beer after I visited Amsterdam) and 55DSL.

So, readers, anyone know where you can buy Aiko gear? I’ll fire off an e-mail tonight and hopefully get a response from Aiko.

*UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE* Look at this post to find out where to buy Aiko products.